


Love that Moves the Sun and Other Stars

by costcopizza



Category: Lovecraft Country (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Pirates, Post-Canon, Tentacles, The British, all manner of horrors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:14:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27381022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/costcopizza/pseuds/costcopizza
Summary: In the aftermath of the autumnal equinox, Tic and Christina find themselves wasting away in Hell. To have any hope of returning to the world of the living, they’ll need to learn to work together
Relationships: Atticus "Tic" Freeman & Christina Braithwhite, Ruby Baptiste/Christina Braithwhite
Comments: 35
Kudos: 115





	1. As Above, So Below

**Author's Note:**

> This is a self-indulgent effort to give all the characters I love a little more time without deviating much from canon. AKA The Divine Comedy and H.P. Lovecraft had a traumatized baby. 
> 
> [(Recommended musical accompaniment)](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4QWfMjIPhF5Jegyr4b9GoV?si=RsDvP0vdSaeRLn1o8IEb1Q)

“Welcome to Valhalla, son. War Eternal, and we’re _hostis humani generis._ So get your sorry ass up.”

Tic scrambles, shaken out of his stupor by a man smoking a corncob pipe, his face long like Bogie’s. A Field Marshal’s cap sits askew on his head, squinting eyes obscured by the thick, sickly shadow it casts. He grabs Tic up by the neck of his uniform, pressing an M1 Garand to his chest. The strange man is itching and jaundiced, and Tic disoriented, helmet falling over his face.

Bombs drop, sirens blare, and people scream. The sky is absent above him, like a black fog disguising fighter jets and Valkyries. No stars, no moon.

Tic’s boots sink into mud as he steps forward. The blood-soaked pit is full of men and women up to their necks in it, crying out to him. The Field Marshal blows smoke from the corner of his thin mouth, the stiff line of his lips brooking no argument.

“Onward, soldier.” The Field Marshal’s deep voice rumbles, cutting through the noise and smoke, driving Tic on.

And so he goes, one foot in front of the other. Into trenches, behind bags of sand, as bullets, javelins, and arrows whiz past, on his belly through rotting flesh and bones. It’s all over him, the crude muck of death. A boot presses between his shoulders suddenly, pushing him into the broken, lifeless body of a woman, her face bruised by knuckles. Her head wound gushes blood until it pools, the work of an American bullet.

The spectral Field Marshal stands above him, gritting out garbled words until Tic can understand just one. “Up.”

Tic rises, a sidearm appearing in his shaking hands. “Shoot,” the man says, and Tic still can’t see his eyes. He lifts his arms, and the woman who was dead is alive suddenly, pleading in a language he does not speak. “Shoot her, she’s a spy. A communist sympathizer,” Corncob spits.

“Shit,” Tic mutters, tears mingling with blood and mud on his face. “Shit. _Shit.”_

He doesn't get time to shoot. His forearms are ripped open, tendons severed and veins flowing. He can feel the pain deep in a part of himself – and it's familiar, somehow. The gun falls, swallowed by the ground. His eyes close and the sirens blare. The helmet is gone and he’s in an open field, alone. On his knees, he cries.

Tobacco smoke. A muddy boot. A kick to his side, and: “Welcome to Valhalla, son. War Eternal, and we’re _hostis humani generis._ So get your sorry ass up.”

* * *

Tic wakes again. Only now, there’s no Field Marshal. Instead, the soft whispers of a hundred voices fill his mind until he sees, finally.

He checks himself over, feeling his rapid pulse, panting, scared, but focused. He wears green fatigues, light fabrics fit for the jungles of a front where no American soldier should be. He rolls up the sleeves, running his fingers over his inner arms to make sure he’s whole.

After a moment, he takes stock of his surroundings.

The sky is clear. Stars shine, blazing a path in constellations he doesn’t recognize. High cliffs of barren rock stand tall all around him. Spread across the field are soldiers throughout history, killers and marauders. Murderers who, in life, thought themselves honorable heroes and those who know better.

He sees thick beards, tips bleached with lye, and leather jerkins. They carry short blades and axes, heaving round shields into their enemies. Beyond them, a phalanx forms, spears pointing forward. Heels are torn with the slashes of longswords from behind, and white and red tunics retreat into the craggy crevices between endless mountains, an enormous cross held high above their roving army.

Among them all, American soldiers. Boys in green sweating through their fatigues as they fight. More and more of them appear in uniforms fit for the heat – until they’re torn in half by explosives hidden underfoot.

He stays seated on the ground, arms resting on knees as he observes the grand epic play out in front of him. He watches for what feels like eons. The warriors fight and die, some in agony, others joyously. They fall where they stand, and after a time, wake to do it all over again.

The sun never rises. The stars never shift. Tic sits, and waits, and thinks. He never grows hungry, and he never thirsts. There’s knowledge he knows he possesses, but to reach it, he needs something. He runs a hand over his face. Rubs at his eyes, tired, and falls back against dirt and gravel.

The next time he wakes, a Celtic warrior, decorated proudly in woad, presses the muzzle of her M16 to his neck. She’s unintelligible, and he’s sick of it, this place where nothing makes sense. He’s Atticus Freeman, and he wants to leave.

He grabs the barrel of the gun as she goes to pull the trigger, wrestling it from her hands until he’s aiming it at her knees instead.

“Where the fuck am I?” he screams, chest heaving and muscles straining.

She backs away slowly. “You’re in the Otherworld,” she speaks. “Do you know _what_ you are?”

He pinches his lips together, afraid of the words forcing their way out.

“I’m dead.”

“That’s right. And now we find glory.”

“Nah. We’re in Hell, not Avalon. There’s no glory in this.” He looks down at the rifle, the butt pressed to his shoulder. “Move. I don’t wanna have to shoot you.”

The woman narrows her eyes, and for a moment he thinks she’ll force his hand. But she steps back gingerly, then sprints into the chaos of battle.

He lowers her stolen rifle and pinches the bridge of his nose.

If he can just understand the rules of this damned realm, so imbued with magic that the dead rise again, maybe he can find a way back home.

* * *

Tic wanders from the battlefield, steps heavy as he marches in the only direction he can. He walks and he ponders, and he tries to piece together what he remembers. He has his name, he has his death, but he doesn’t know what fills the space between. Instead, he feels his isolation. He is totally alone, unknown in this strange dream world.

_It’ll be easier with help,_ he reasons, chewing his lip as he scans the horizon for a clue. Far in the distance, beyond a stormy coast, glowing light peeks from behind masts and warship antennas. Submarines surface briefly and then dive down into murky depths, figures clinging to their hulls.

He takes a breath, closes his eyes, and imagines himself there, closer, standing on a dock. A crew waits for him, their ship just off the shore. He’s read _Treasure Island_ , and he pictures so clearly a small tavern by the sea where old sailors spend their last coin and then succumb to the drink. Legends fallen from grace, their stories dying with them.

He feels the weight of a pair of glasses in his breast pocket where there had been none. Slipping the frames on to his nose, his hand goes to his pants pocket without thought, revealing a faded piece of parchment with an _‘x’_ marked over what seems to be an island. Sea creatures in red ink chart a course to the light, and Tic feels himself drawn forward.

* * *

One minute he’s running down the sidewalk, and the next he’s–

George lifts his makeshift eyepatch, staring down at his skinned knee. Before he can even think to cry, strong hands slide under his arms and raise him high into a crushing hug.

“Pop-Pop’s got you, boy,” comes Grandpa’s scratchy voice as he hauls him back to the house. Then it’s Mama and Auntie Ji fussing over him, fixing his scrape.

He still hasn’t had time to cry, only dangle his legs over the edge of the dining table until he’s free to find his stick sword and rejoin the other kids on the block while they play.

Grandpa always sits on the porch, keeping an eye out, and George knows that’s good. The first thing he remembers being told, and being taught to always remember, is that he can’t leave their sight. It’s not safe, the adults had said. So he waves to Grandpa as he runs off, patched up and ready for adventure.

“I don’t know where he gets that,” Montrose hisses in observation. Leti passes him a cold bottle of Coke.

She watches George go with hands on hips, squinting as he finds his friends a few houses over.

“Gets what?” Leti asks.

“That stiff upper lip shit. Never cries.”

She nods. “And Tic always cried,” they say in unison, fighting small smiles. “Montrose, there ain’t nothing wrong with crying,” Leti snorts.

“I’m not saying there is. Just thinking. Either he gets that toughness, that resilience, from you, or he’s just made of stronger stuff than any of us.”

“Uh-uh.” Leti glances toward the front door, away from Montrose. “If we’re talking about strength? _That’s all Tic.”_

* * *

The tavern, the harbor, the ship and the crew. It’s all there when Tic looks around himself. Wooden boards creak where he steps, and it makes him want to carry himself lighter, nervous to stick out among hardened brigands and pirates even with an M16 hanging from his shoulder.

“Excuse me,” he tries, pushing his glasses further up his nose as he approaches the barkeep in the tavern. The cramped space is hot and suffocating, like so much is in this place. Flying bugs swarm in the lantern light, dawn too far off to chase them away.

Tables are filled with boisterous sailors drinking mysterious pints. Tic watches from the corner of his eye as they slap each other’s backs with bloodied hands that drip to the filthy floor.

Some have scars across their faces, open wounds that seem never to heal, not that they give a shit. Others have lost limbs. Metal and wood pegs press into tender flesh. Tic takes a deep breath.

A musician in the corner plays his hurdy gurdy to the beat of a hellish tune he can’t place. And the smell…

“I need to get on a boat heading here.” Tic taps his finger on the map where it lies open on the counter. “I’m an honest worker. Won’t need much. Just safe passage.”

The barkeep twists his face, grimacing so Tic can see the black ooze coating his yellow teeth. “Calico,” he yells, not at Tic but behind him, then returns to his task of pouring noxious-smelling liquids into tankards. The _plop plop_ of the chunky drink makes Tic purse his lips to keep from gagging.

“What’s this?” a man says, his colorful coat in tatters. He swaggers closer, flintlock pistols clanking against the metal buckles all over his body. There are at least six, easy to reach on his person.

“Blackbeard?” Tic asks hesitantly, pointing to the other man’s chest.

“Ah. Right, because I’m packing.”

“And packing and packing,” Tic mumbles, smirking.

“Long story, that. Calico Jack. Pleasure to meet you…?”

“Atticus.” Their hands meet in a firm shake, each man taking the measure of the other.

Then a shade appears over Calico’s shoulder, its menacing presence causing Tic to step back. Shadowy tendrils spill across the floor between Calico’s legs, stopping just at Tic’s boots.

A woman appears out of nothingness, emaciated and pale, eyes as impossible to find under the brim of her wide hat as the Field Marshal’s had been. Her voice is a croak, and he sees finally that her hands rest on twin cutlasses strapped to her belt.

“Fuck you want?” she spits, and her blood red hair reminds him of something, like an itch in the back of his mind. Both pirates wait for his answer.

“I’ve got a map and a place I need to be. Was hoping I could hitch a ride with someone heading out that way.” Tic holds out the parchment, tapping the _‘x’_ again. Calico rubs his chin until his eyes brighten.

“I think we can come to an arrangement of sorts. You trade me that fancy longrifle of yours in exchange for room and board on the _Kingston._ Finest vessel on the sea. How’s that grab you, Tic? Is _Tic_ all right?”

“Tic is perfect.” The itch eases slightly. “Don’t think I’ll be wanting or needing this anyway,” he realizes, happy to hand over the gun.

Calico checks the cartridge clip with a click then peeks through the front sight. And before Tic knows it, he’s firing off quick rounds through the roof.

Everyone grumbles but no one dares do more for fear of his shade having something to say about it.

“A proper test,” Calico shouts with a laugh.

Tic swallows down his nerves.

* * *

Waves rock against the _Kingston_ with alarming frequency. Tic holds on to the side of the deck as a torpedo jets beneath the surface, missing them by a slim margin.

It’s mayhem in every direction he looks. Ships battling. Huge swells rolling in from every corner. It’s almost worse than the battlefield – at least then Tic could observe in relative peace. Here, he feels vulnerable, and he wonders how they’ll ever make it to where they’re going.

As the panic rises, he makes the mistake of looking down. Impossibly strange shapes pass below.

“Don’t stare long. Else you might see it,” Tic hears from behind him.

“See what?”

“Fathomless depths too dark to be real.”

“Just trenches, like the Marianas. It’s nothing.”

Calico’s Shade, the fierce woman, sneers. “Nothing’s nothing here. If it looks like a monster, it is one. See that?” she points ahead. “Dark. Darker than these waters.”

Tic tries to see what she sees. “If the water is deep, the sun’s rays—”

“Ain’t no sun here.” And she’s right. It makes Tic shut his mouth and listen. “I’ve seen ‘em. Big eyes that don’t blink. Webbed claws. Sharp scales and sharper teeth. Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you, the deep ones. But if you do—”

“Enough of that, darling. I have a question for our newest hire,” Calico interrupts, finding them on the sterncastle deck. “Sailing treacherous waters is nothing new for this crew. But I would very much like to know why we’re heading into the unknown. Stolen treasure? Lost love? Come on. Tell Daddy.”

The displeasure on Tic’s face must register because Calico clears his throat and adjusts his posture, though he still expects an answer.

With a twist of his lips, Tic tries. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know. But something’s guiding me.”

He doesn’t mention the voices, the force of their intention filling him with a sense of security even here in Hell. He hasn’t dissected it sufficiently yet, so he keeps all that close to his chest.

“It’s like… I know something important’s waiting for me, and this map’s the only way I know how to get there,” he continues. “Like I was cold before, stuck in the dark. And now that I’m going where I’m meant to, I see light. I feel warmth.”

Calico hums thoughtfully, clapping a hand to Tic’s thick shoulder. “Afraid that’s just the weather in Hell,” he says, and it’s enough to put Tic at ease. “If this whole thing ends up a bust, you could sail with us seadogs for a little while longer. The undead pirate life means freedom, acceptance, and brotherhood, as it were.”

“No English governors to put you out of business down here, right?”

“Oh, the English missing from Hell? Not a chance. When we see their flag within firing range, well—” Calico points to the tips of cannons along the sides of their brig with a wink. _“Heavy artillery.”_

Tic can imagine it. War Eternal. Old scores settled endlessly.

The ship sails on towards the _‘x’_. It's not long before the shadow of an enormous bridge engulfs them, red light from the sky bathing its arched pillars. It’s gargantuan, and Tic wonders what gods could create a structure so large, and why they would choose to.

There’s a rumble and a roar carried on the wind that fills their sails.

And ahead of the _Kingston_ is their unholy destination. They approach steadily, the crew as used to their strange task as Calico professed. Somehow, coming out from beneath the bridge’s shadow, the air feels muggier than Tic’s worst summer in Florida, a thought that unsettles him.

The sudden introduction of _memories_ leaves him unsteady on his feet – not that the rocking waves ever made him feel planted.

It’s all he’s wanted since he first came to with some notion of who and where he was. That the pieces are finally coming together feels like proof he’s going in the right direction.

Calico calls for the anchor to drop, and Tic sees himself running from a manor crumbling all around him.

A rowboat is lowered while Tic struggles to pull the trigger of a gun, arm frozen as someone circles him, opening the blinds he carefully closed.

Mama is alive and he’s too small for his coke-bottle glasses, already reading chapter books, lost in the rich worlds upon their pages. His uncle slips new ones into his backpack whenever he stops by the shop.

The air is smoky and rivers of lava spill into the bay, steaming as hell meets sea, and all he can think of are those sisters, the Baptiste (or is it Lewis?) girls stomping up and down the block, always so busy.

The last thing he sees, gazing out at the volcanic island where _‘x’_ marks the spot, are visions of his cousin held up by Ji-Ah, their memories mixing as their blood comes together for a final spell.

The itch is gone. The emptiness between birth and death is filled.

“Keep the engine running,” he says, already climbing down into the rowboat.

“Fuck’s that mean?” the Shade asks.

“It means we don’t leave until he returns, darling,” Calico answers.

* * *

With every step forward, the angry yelling of dead assholes grows louder and louder.

They’re strapped to sacrificial racks, arms and legs held in place as their bodies slump forward. The wreckage of Ardham rests at their feet, burnt to ash. There’s nothing else. Just the stench of sulfur and death and a cemetery’s worth of pasty, recessive racists.

Which is all well and good – until he sees _that_ red dress. Red because of his blood.

Her neck is twisted painfully away from the rest of her clan, and as he gets close, he sees the purple bruising at her throat. The flesh is mangled and her bones are bent in ways they shouldn’t be, limbs out of their sockets from being suspended so long. Of all the horrors he’s witnessed, her misshapen body is the one that makes him double over.

Only when he wipes his mouth and climbs back to his feet does she speak.

“Hi, Atticus,” she sighs, delirious. The sound of her voice – the sound of someone who knows him after so long – is enough to make him cry. So he does, wiping fat tears away as he marches up to her self-made crucifixion.

Her contorted limbs come out of their straps easily, and she weighs nothing, limp as he lowers her to the ground.

“I got you. Let me just—” he says with a sniffle. Before she can protest, he snaps her neck into place. She screams straight into his ear until he lets go, and then she’s cracking her joints and stretching her spine until she’s put herself back together again, all haunted and jittery. “Christina,” he prods, finally saying her name in return.

She holds up a shaky hand, taking a moment. Then obnoxious whining, cursing God and Eve, drives her into action. The sooner they leave this island, the better. “There’s probably a lot you wanna talk about. All those big feelings stored in your muscles. Can it wait?” He nods. “Do you know a way out of here? Preferably out of this circle of Hell entirely.”

“Yeah. But…” The whining gets louder. “Is that your father?”

“He’s enjoying his Eden.” Christina touches Tic’s arm. “We’d better not disturb him.”

Familial tension aside, if there’s anyone who might know the secrets of this place, it’s Christina Braithwhite.

* * *

“Coat or no coat?” Christina asks as she rifles through Calico’s trunks. It’s more impressive than any closet Tic’s ever seen, yet all she chooses is a pair of fly-front breeches, a white high collared shirt, and boots. She finishes with a silk cravat, nimble fingers tying it with the flourish of an expert.

They’d pulled up anchor and were headed back to port, and Tic’s end of the deal, the honest work, needed fulfilling. Christina was part of that package, so practical clothes were requested and given.

She considers a leather tricorn hat, then, tipping it in his direction. Tic pinches his lips, focusing instead on his own fresh outfit. Simple trousers, a short-sleeved shirt buttoned loose, and his ACU boots.

“That won’t last five minutes. This place is hotter than…” he trails off.

Christina takes his word for it and settles for what she has on. She’s more herself than on the island, and for each nautical mile they travel she becomes less of a shivering mess and more the deadly, fashionable enigma he’s used to.

They head up to the deck. The stars shine bright above them, bathing the ship in ghostly light. Everything is still. The wind that’s required to power their brig is nowhere to be felt, so Calico calls out to them with their first official thankless tasks as pirates. Fresh meat belongs in the Crow’s Nest, high up among black sails to observe what’s seen and unseen.

An unbothered Christina takes lead climbing the rigging.

“’Stina,” he calls out, following carefully behind her. “Ready to talk?”

“If you wanna.” She sounds exasperated.

Tic chews the inside of his cheek. “First, can I trust you?”

“My family chartered an island for our self-pity. You rescued me from it. Was that an accident, or do you already know the answer to your question?” Tic doesn’t speak, just waits for an answer. She shrugs a shoulder after a moment. “I’m as trustworthy as the trust you put in me, Atticus.”

“Nah. None of that. No riddles. We have shit to hash out.”

It’s a fair point. And an understatement. So, she stops and waits for him to climb beside her on the shroud.

He can’t suppress his pettiness, so he asks, “You aren’t worried about Ruby?”

“Why should I be?”

“You caught her spying. Killed her from what I saw when Ji-Ah joined us. You don’t think she might be down here?”

Christina’s eyes flash. “Wherever Ruby is now, I’m sure she’s just fine. If I were you, I’d be more worried about Leti. She’s a risk-taker.”

“Easy,” he warns.

“Scrappy, too, which I’ve always admired in a woman. Did you teach her that right hook?”

It almost makes Tic want to snap, but he pushes it down. They had to make their peace. “I saw you kill her too.”

“And resurrect her, saving her and her unborn child.”

At his surprise, Christina purses her lips into a commiserating line. Ji-Ah’s connection went both ways.

“I’ll admit,” she continues, “cooler heads should have prevailed. But can you blame me? You were reneging on the terms of our honest bargain.”

“Half of that bargain was to kill me and send me to Hell.”

“Hell was never part of my plan. For you or me. If I may,” she inclines her head. He gives a hesitant nod. “You can be as mad at me as you like. But don’t think that you’re down here because of some sick trick of fate. And it isn’t just the war. You left your woman without her man. Left your son to live his life without a father whose love he’ll spend countless restless nights questioning, wishing he could feel. The sins add up, Atticus.”

His hands on the coarse rope feel slippery the more she speaks. He can’t stop chewing his cheek. “Not sold on you giving a damn about that, considering your intentions.”

Christina nods before speaking, and her words are almost soft. “No one told me that you and Leti were in the family way.”

“Would it have changed anything?”

“Guess we’ll never know.”

* * *

A whistle blows as they near the top. Panicked shouts carry from one end of the deck to the other.

The dark shadows of the black sea give way to a glowing form _._

It dives below them, almost to the point of being unseen. Then Tic hears it, like a tidal wave pounding the ship as something surfaces. He looks up hoping to spot Christina, but the Crow’s Nest is gone. Only splinters remain.

Calico’s Shade was right. Nothing’s nothing here.

It now stands tall, higher than the masts, bigger than the Statue of Liberty. The Moon and the Grand Canyon – every impressive spectacle Tic can recall – suddenly feel like a joke. It stares with furrowed brows and glowing red eyes. Tic can only hold on to the rigging with all his strength. 

Water rains down from its monstrous limbs, wide as houses, as long tentacles whip out violently from its jaw. Tic sees her then. Christina. Clutched in the claw of the beast. Each of its tentacles has a circle of sharp teeth that champ and snap, moving of their own volition like leeches.

With a sickening crack, a tentacle rips clean through her sternum. He sees her dangle limply, the sight an echo of the past. Another thick tentacle slowly winds its way around her body, up to her neck, until a flesh-eating mouth slips over her face. Tic can see the blood pour down, staining her white shirt.

As he musters the strength for a spell, hoping to harness those whispers that guide him, the ripping boom of Calico’s heavy artillery splits the air. Tic’s ears ring and every cell in his body jumps.

The beast grows larger in size before Tic’s eyes, absorbing the heavy shells without injury. Its grip on Christina doesn’t lessen.

It isn’t until torpedoes from a nearby Royal Navy warship tear into the beast’s side that Christina finally drops into the ocean, sinking under dark waves.

* * *

Ruby rises out of the bath with a satisfied sigh. Another long day sloughed off like a second skin. She pulls on the same black robe as always, tying the sash as she gazes into the vanity mirror.

This is not a room at Leti’s boarding house. This is not an apartment on the South Side. This is the mansion in Hyde Park, all heavy woods and thick banisters. Once Christina’s. Now Ruby’s.

The window is cracked, and she can hear children still playing tag in the street as the late afternoon wears on, heat giving way to a blessedly cool evening.

It isn’t surprising when the doorbell rings, but Ruby wants to hide from it all the same. If it’s Leti asking another question about magic, hoping to dig through what’s left of Christina’s notes and ancient tomes, she won’t open the door. It’s as simple as that.

Instead, when she peeks through the peephole, Dee stands there, shifting her weight from one leg to the other.

Ruby takes a beat, schooling her features into that of the sisterly neighbor, the once-babysitter, the ally during crisis after crisis. Then the door is open and Dee is squaring her shoulders like she has something important to say.

Something important _and_ personal, Ruby discovers, as Dee tiptoes through her words.

Diana Freeman is eighteen and grown. And there’s this girl she can’t talk about with anyone else. Feelings she isn’t comfortable admitting when every Sunday is spent in the pews at church. Even if her mama probably got her fair share of loving in the multiverse. Ruby resists rolling her eyes.

“Why are you coming to me with this, Dee?”

“You’re the only person I know who… I remember some things, from _that_ summer.”

She doesn’t say what things. If it was Ruby pleading with Christina to save her life, or if it was Ruby’s conspicuous absence from the neighborhood while she shacked up with her white lover for a time, according to the gossip.

All that aside, the truth is Ruby wasn’t familiar with the gay scene until Christina Braithwhite happened. Sure, she grasped the concept. She knew in the way everyone knows. She wasn’t sheltered. She saw the men who hung around the bar and dressed to the nines every now and then. She still sees them out on warm nights, and she respects the way they march to the beat of their own drum. How she fits into that tapestry, however, is a mystery even to Ruby.

She’s time-traveled and dimension-hopped trying to find out. She’s fucked her way through the known universe – men and women alike – no limit to having what she wants, how she wants it. She is finally thoroughly uninterrupted.

And still nothing compares to lazy afternoons in silk sheets with jazz standards playing on the radio. Long baths and magic lessons after dark. It makes her furious. It makes her upset at her choices. For a long time, she wished to go back and undo that decision to help Leti. But she’s seen that play out a million different ways too. And never does Ruby Baptiste get the girl.

Dee looks ready to invite herself in, and that’s when Ruby steps closer to the threshold to keep her out. It’s a struggle even now to be so resentful of such a sweet girl. She knows she shouldn’t be. But the matter of Christina’s fate should’ve been left in her hands. Not the hands of a fourteen-year-old girl, hurt and still healing from her own losses. “She killed Tic and they were just gonna let her go,” Dee had said through angry tears after that night had blown over and Tic was buried (and Ruby was awake).

Ruby kept her mouth shut then, but all she thinks about still is Christina sipping her potion. Chasing it with a shot of Hennessy because it’s Ruby’s favorite to taste on her tongue.

Dee would have to ask her uncle for advice, because Ruby was selfish now. That was the lesson.

“Right. Well, best talk to Montrose.” There’s no warmth. Just Ruby leaning into the big door as she pushes it closed. 

* * *

Tic pulls Christina on to shore. Coughing up sea water and sputtering until they can breathe again. Christina says something, an incantation, healing herself. Her mangled face, half eaten by the creature’s tentacle, mends in an instant. Tic watches on as his chest heaves, forehead wrinkling.

_Christina still has her magic._

He sits up, arms resting on knees. In the distance, the beast is nowhere to be seen. The _Kingston_ and the _HMS Thunder Child_ sail proudly on the horizon. Pirate and Navy. Temporary allies.

“I want out of here. Whatever it takes,” Tic starts slowly, wiping the water from his face. “We fucked it all up, back in the world of the living. But maybe now’s a chance to do better. You told me our destinies weren’t decided by our fathers. I thought a long time about that. Maybe you were right. We are family though, and that means something to me.”

Christina considers his words, eyes closed where she lays half in the low surf. She pushes the hair from her own bloody face. When she speaks, her voice is raw – even if her words are as imperious as ever.

“I’ll help you, but I’m not going back. Your people successfully completed their spell. That was to bind the _Book of Names,_ was it not? And as Leti so kindly informed me, bogart all the magic on Earth so us white folks can’t use it anymore.” Christina has the nerve to look hurt as she sits up beside Tic. “At least I was willing to share my power.”

“Yeah. Real good at sharing too,” Tic scoffs, rubbing at his arms.

“It wasn’t p—”

_“Personal._ I know. Doesn’t change the fact that you saw me as disposable. Something about seeing you strung up on that rack like I was, head twisted around so you wouldn’t have to hear Samuel Braithwhite’s big mouth… It felt like justice. So don’t worry. There’s no grudge. I’d just rather not be taken for a fool.”

Christina raises an eyebrow before looking down. “About that. I do want to apologize. I’m sorry, Atticus. You didn’t deserve to die.”

He looks surprised. “Thank you.”

“Which is why you should've given me the _Book of Names.”_

Tic rolls his eyes, standing up from the hard ground. He brushes himself off then holds out a hand.

They’re all each other has.

“You coming?” he asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> And big thanks to my creative partner in crime, Stew


	2. The Adversary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a shaky truce, Tic and Christina put their partnership to the test. Meanwhile in the living world, the balance shifts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's therapy

It’s tradition that a girl on the cusp of womanhood be molded into a lady.

Christina Braithwhite is on that cusp with little interest in the transformation promised.

Her dress chafes. Her scalp aches from the tiara pinned to her hair. There’s a boy too. His white-gloved hand takes hers. Nathaniel Something. Descended from the first Pilgrims according to his bragging. They stand on the periphery of the hall, smoky from candlelight. Villagers in homespun dresses and bonnets carry refreshments on fancy trays.

She sees her father at the center of it all. Brandishing a sword visible only because it glimmers in the dim light. A cotillion should be a staid affair. It’s what Christina thought it would be as she endured the lessons. Not in magic as she’d begged, but etiquette. How to sit, how to eat, how to show respect. She scoffs into her flute of champagne – her very first glass and the only upside to this ordeal.

His sermonizing is loud enough to carry. All about defending faith and repairing walls. Lofty parables he’s always favored to science. He catches her eye through the crowd. She knows the look well and steps carefully through the inner circle of men in suits and women in dresses.

They part like the Red Sea for the daughter of a man so powerful. Samuel Braithwhite. Head of the Michigan Chapter now. Aiming for the heavens.

“My lovely daughter is here to demonstrate,” Samuel says, and the crowd laughs. “Christina. If I hold this sword to your chest and tell you that to throw yourself upon it ensures this Lodge’s success for centuries to come, will you?”

She’d sooner turn the blade on him.

“Yes, father.”

He presses the tip to the fine silk of her dress just long enough to make her wonder if he’s capable. The last Braithwhites, whittled down to one, all for power.

Then it’s gone.

“Bring the sacrifice.”

Christina sips her champagne. Nathaniel comes up behind her, pesky hand on the small of her back. He whispers something against her ear. She hears the spit in his mouth and nothing else. If she ever gets her hands on a time machine, the first thing she’ll do is sink the Mayflower.

A great tome is passed to Samuel. Sword in one hand, tools in the other. She can’t remember the passage he recites – that she matches word for word under her breath. She can’t remember where he struck or what she thought of the carnage.

She only remembers the way blood spattered the hem of her dress. Every hack sent another spray until there was a pulpy mess where a person once stood. An offering for Shallum’s daughters, the youngest pulled from its mother cow that spring. This was how they repaired Ardham’s own walls of Jerusalem.

“Where to next?”

She hears it as her father first. Then she sees Tic watching the river stretch out from the sea. It’s all black soot and torched banks.

They’ve charted a course from Violence to Purgatory based on diagrams and drawings she remembers, but the actual path to get there is elusive. An educated guess for a well-educated witch.

Hell isn’t beyond her. She knows it’s the absence of peace and the disappearance of time.

And what Hell isn’t can fill an ocean. Hell isn’t death. Hell isn’t forgetting. It can’t possibly be to achieve its ends. Christina’s final moments of life gave her the gift of true terror. Her first time feeling existential dread.

Death is a girl with a metal arm crushing her larynx.

Hell is knowing she deserves it for losing focus.

* * *

Christina doesn’t know how long they’ve been walking. Blood the color of rust stains her neckline, injuries spelled away somehow.

Gravel crunches and Tic wanders ahead, hands on his hips like he’s chewing on a thought. He can’t take his eyes off the river.

“What’s the matter? Someone steal your lunch money while I wasn’t looking?” Christina kicks the dirt, edging closer but not as close to the river as Tic. “Must’ve happened while my face was being eaten off.”

His nose scrunches.

“Nothing like that. I want out, and I’m wondering what I gotta do to earn it. You know I was baptized? Right before everything?”

Of course she knows. She’d seen it herself, reveling in the love Tic felt. Leti’s faith in him was encompassing. But it also felt false.

“You have to realize all that stuff is hogwash,” she says. “A special bath isn’t gonna save you from the place you think you deserve to be.”

“If that’s true, then why are you here?”

A shoulder goes up. It’s simple, really. “I’ve been a bad girl.”

It didn’t feel like it at the time. A woman under the heel of patriarchal society using every resource available to get ahead. She thought that if she did so by enabling others to get what they wanted, too, it would even out. Scrupulous deal-making with fair terms, going so far as to offer compromises because of certain _variables._ Her moral compass was just a little off. Spilled milk she can’t mop up now.

Tic doesn’t have a response to that, attention already stolen away.

There’s something on the other side that feels less like Hell and more like progress. Tic’s desperate to reach it. He says as much. And when she tells him they can’t just swim across, he wants to fuss; it’s obvious in how he crosses his arms and gets that hard look on his face. “It’s the river of anger,” she offers simply as explanation. “Negative emotions will sink you.”

It’s been this way ever since he tugged her up by the hand. Tic trying to go forward and Christina telling him not yet. Tic’s shoulders slumping and Christina ready to offer her cravat as a hanky. Tic wanting more and Christina having to keep him focused on realistic goals. One step then the next.

So they forge on in silence. Slipping on rocks. Climbing over ashen dunes in search of another way to get where they need to be. She promised to help him leave, and she will. It’s just that Hell has a habit of making simple tasks perilous.

They summit the final dune and see the shape of a strange structure blocking the river’s path. It slowly comes into focus through swirling dust and fog, obscured in a way that forces them forward to investigate.

Tic leads and Christina trails cautiously.

With every step, the sheer magnitude reveals itself. Like a single slab of enormous rock, polished until it fades into the backdrop. When Christina gazes up, the top merely disappears into clouds.

It’s daunting even to her. The door isn’t welcoming either.

“Doubt we got much choice but to cross here,” Tic assesses.

“If we do, I go first.” Tic moves to protest, but she cuts him off with a sigh. “Let’s face it, without your shoggoth, you won’t have the faintest idea what to do when we need a little defensive magic. No. I go first.”

_“Bloggoth,”_ he corrects.

His pride needs a moment.

* * *

Tic imagined high ceilings and ceremonial altars. Massive chambers that once held great old ones in a time when all this might have been home to gods.

But inside, it feels claustrophobic. Pitch blackness that would be disorienting if there was any other direction to go but forward. The tight passageway squeezes Tic into a single file behind Christina. His breaths feel shallow. He ducks his head, making himself smaller the more his lungs constrict.

If this place is as malleable as it seems, why doesn’t it bend to his will now?

Reading glasses, treasure maps, helpful pirates – those things came easy. But here, the furthest he’s ventured from forever war, everything feels unbalanced. Tic wonders if it’s a sign. Should he leave? Does he deserve to?

There’s a saying Tic’s heard but can’t place that buries itself deep. _A boy with an unspeakable past is a man with an unendurable future. He’s good to look at, good to dance with, probably good to sleep with, but he’s no longer good for love._

What’s he worth? He walks on faster, nearly tripping over his own boots before he catches himself on the wall. He takes a beat.

Christina’s confident footsteps, the tempo of her breaths, the scrape of her hand along the wall as she finds the way through – he homes in on the little things, trying to distract himself from unwanted thoughts.

Then he hears it. An extra set of footsteps, as if something smart has been following from a distance. The air feels different too. Pressure bares down. Goosebumps rise on his flesh. He can barely breathe at all.

“Christina,” he starts, but he can’t hear her anymore either.

* * *

“Atticus?” Christina calls back.

She feels silly when there’s no answer.

The longer she walks the endless corridor, the more she feels it. The hopelessness. The hallucinations. If she hadn’t grown up in Ardham, she might be easier prey. But she knows this game. Creepy whispers from the shadows are child’s play.

_“Christina.”_

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she answers whatever it is.

Before she has a chance to blink, the vacuum of darkness peels away into warm light. A chandelier she can feel the heat from. A table with a feast. Ruby’s soft hand cradling her own.

A voice croons _“It seems like a mighty long time”_ from the stereo. Leti wastes none, body-checking Christina’s shoulder as she passes around the table, swaying easily to the music while hustling everyone into their chairs to eat.

There’s a little boy with Leti’s dimples. Dee and her mother. Montrose, anxious like there’s somewhere he’d rather be – someone he’d rather be with. And Ji-Ah.

Tic sits at one end of the table, smiling at his family, and Christina sits at the other. 

“Leti,” Ruby warns like it’s a regular argument between the sisters.

“What? I’m sorry, Christina. Did I hurt you?” she laughs, leaning across the table to help the watchful little boy fill his plate. “Is that invulnerability spell really good for nothing?”

Christina doesn’t answer. Just looks out the front windows, black with frost. She finally notices old Hiram’s house of horrors covered in Christmas decorations. She looks down at herself. A sweater to match Tic’s. Same dizzying festive pattern and all.

Ruby squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back. She knows it’s a trick, but she can’t help giving into temptation.

“Before we eat,” Ruby leans in close, speaking soft and low. Her eyes are exactly how Christina remembers. Not a detail out of place. Still mesmerizing as a figment of her imagination. “I wanted to give you a little something.”

“Early Christmas gift from Santa? You shouldn’t have.”

“Don’t worry. It’s a gift for me too,” Ruby answers with a hot look Christina’s only seen once as herself.

The hand holding hers pulls away, and what’s left behind is a familiar token. A little something in spirit and in truth. No one at the table seems to care. Even this version of Ruby, apparition or ghost, gets whatever she wants.

Christina pops the cap and knocks back coppery liquid.

It happens slowly, like a silver screen siren tricked by her lover into imbibing deadly poison. The tiniest drop slipped into her goblet of wine. It’s a betrayal then, but Christina knows she can stop this at any moment. She lets her throat seize and her body tremble.

Transformation is usually painless. It’s metamorphosis that hurts.

She’s almost surprised when something inside tears its way out, limb through limb, ripping her apart until William’s form replaces hers as if she’s the impostor. White skin and patches of long hair drip down broad shoulders.

Ruby reaches for a slimy, shivering thigh beneath the tablecloth.

The record skips.

“Well, damn. Thought I had more self-esteem than this.”

Christina deflates in her seat.

* * *

There’s a squelch as creeping steps near. Slow and sticky, thick with something like the primordial gunk that sits at the bottom of the Styx. Tic breathes deep, gathering his courage to face whatever it is.

He feels the fear and lets it be his strength.

The steps get quicker, their wet sound impossibly loud in the tunnel. He raises his fists.

Hands grab him from behind suddenly, dragging him back. He nearly fights it – until he hears a spell spoken in the language of Adam. Christina steps forward, angling her body in front of his as blinding white light pulses down the tunnel. The pointed tail of something scatters, almost outpacing brightness.

Then it’s dark again.

She takes his wrist without a word, dragging him behind her as they run. The passageway begins to widen, but they don’t stop until they’re well clear of the crossing.

Tic looks back and groans. From this bank of the river, the megastructure is about as big as a shop on main street. His hands go to his knees. Eyes shut tight, though not for long. Christina grabs his shoulders, pulling him straight again.

“It’s not real unless you make it real, Atticus. All of this, it’s the hell we’ve sentenced ourselves to through limitless magic and limitless imagination. Only, we’re all fucking pathetic. And we all want to suffer, stuck in this gravity,” she says, unblinking.

Tic’s never heard her like this. Urgent without a trace of the usual apathy. It makes something click.

“So if I let my fear go, as much as I can, I’ll be able to do whatever I want in this shithole?”

“Nearly. The texts I’ve read aren’t clear on just what this _shithole_ is, but it’s not so different from the world we know. Magic here requires intention and permission. How mine coexists with yours. Otherwise I don’t see how this construct can be so stable. The nightmare is cohesive, like a wish we all made.”

“That ugly motherfucker back there—”

“Fed off whatever you were feeling. So buck up.”

* * *

The sun is suspended on the horizon. No matter how far they drag their feet, it never rises and never sets. Just constant pink light that washes over the vast desert beyond the river.

It’s beautiful. The kind of spectacle that might distract from a whole lot of nothing and a traveling partner who refuses to play along.

“I spy—”

“The only shit to spy is sand, Christina. It’s been sand this whole time,” Tic snaps.

“I spy,” she presses on gravely, “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Tic turns on his heel.

She bites her tongue to keep from laughing.

“That ain’t funny.”

“It isn’t. I’m sorry. But I do see something.”

And she does.

A banner, barely visible in the distance.

They eventually catch up to the wagon train as it stops to make camp. Wealthy knights in impractical, ornate armor honing their jousting and fighting. Dance-like swordsmanship, prettier than it is effective.

A roman soldier leans against his javelin. He wears a wolf pelt like a cape and stares them down as they make their way between horses and carts. An unfriendly face, though the rest welcome them to share their fire. Tic is giddy at the idea of it, seeing figures plucked from Arthurian tales up close. Christina just wants to know where they’re heading.

The oldest of the knights tends to a pot of stew over the open fire. He looks skinny and starving but proud. Heavy armor weighs him down, yet its quality is unmistakable. His voice is deep and lyrical – accented, perhaps from Spain – with slow words, as if it takes the last reserves of his strength to make a sound. A round shield sits at his feet and an orange cape rests across his shoulders.

They talk until the pot boils over, and in the course of hearing tales of his famous sword – “Jimena”, for his wife – that won him titles and acclaim as a champion, they get to the bottom of this knightly procession: a tournament known as the Battle at the End of Time.

“We fight to the death until one is left standing. The victor is given a crown of laurel leaves by the emperor himself,” the man says. And Tic feels wary of the look in Christina’s eyes as she listens – too hungry for her own good.

When the stew has been served and the master knight goes to pack his horse, Tic and Christina are left alone by the dying fire.

“A tournament? So that’s your plan to get us to the gate?”

Christina stares into the fire, and Tic can see flames reflected there. She doesn’t answer, just nods a yes as if the why should be obvious.

“We don’t have to do this. We can keep searching on our own.”

“Battle at the end of time. What does that sound like to you?” she asks finally.

“Doom. End times. Ragnarök. Every culture has their own name for it.”

“Besides that.” Tic says nothing, lost, so she continues. “Maybe if we pretend you read it in a book.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you don’t know how to think for yourself. You just follow whatever’s in black and white on a page. There’s no library here, so we have to find the way ourselves. And that man said it plainly: the end of time.” Christina waits again, hoping Tic can figure it out. He doesn’t. “The exit, Atticus.”

He crosses his arms, convinced but chastened.

“I don’t need a lecture.”

“But you clearly need a guide. That’s why you found me. That’s why you’re putting up with me when I’m the one who killed you.” She says it easily. A statement beyond dispute.

“I already told you.” He aimlessly kicks sand into the fire from where he sits. “There’s no grudge. Truth is, I knew I was gonna die, and I let it happen.”

“Why would you do a thing like that?”

“Thought it was for the best.”

Any interest in an argument leaves her. She sighs. “You’re a noble idiot, Atticus Freeman.”

Tic nods, and silence settles around them. Only the crackling fire and the distant clash of swords and shields make a sound. Until a thought strikes. He turns to Christina.

“Why’re you even messing around with the idea of staying? You can come home.”

“Because,” she breathes out, looking away, “I want power. To climb atop Hell’s hierarchy and unseat the devil himself.”

“Bullshit. Power doesn’t matter to you. Not like this.”

Christina shrugs.

“Hell leaves plenty to be desired. But there’s even less for me in the living world. Ruby won’t forgive what I’ve done. Even if she were to, our arrangement was predicated on what I could provide. Magic. Freedom. Other things.”

Her words hang in the air. She watches Tic fumble internally with the idea of her and Ruby – then he settles on something kinder than his instincts.

“Nah. At least up there, you would have a chance and she would have a choice. Staying here is cowardly.”

Christina laughs unexpectedly. She likes Tic with some gumption.

“Why is it that I can’t be trusted with magic, again?”

“Besides the obvious? When white folks twist magic into privilege, things don’t go well for anybody else. My family’s lost more than you’ll ever know because of unchecked power in white hands. _It’s not personal.”_

“Makes perfect sense. And it’s all the more reason I should stay. I wouldn't know how to live.”

“You wouldn’t have magic. Tough. But what you could have is family. And you’d be able to help us. Magic would still be part of your life.”

“Just not to master myself.”

“No. You wanna be a master? Get a dog.”

_If looks could kill._

But then she softens. Tic nudges her with his shoulder and she almost cracks.

“This isn’t a yes. But if I were to leave with you, it would only be to prove I’m not a coward.”

* * *

Time in this place can’t be trusted. It stretches taut and snaps back, leaving a person wondering if two days or two years have gone by.

This is how it feels to travel with the wagon train. Slower than any slow Tic’s felt before. He wants to tap Christina’s shoulder and ask how big Hell is. What these circles are and why they seem to stretch on forever. But she’s quiet, and he doesn’t want to pester her like a kid on a long car ride.

He regrets his impatience soon enough.

It starts off as a cold breeze. It knocks into the sides of the carts gently at first, then more ferociously. The pink haze blots as clouds roll in.

Wind whips his face, and it burns with kicked up sand. Then sharp hail falls, slicing into exposed skin. It sweeps in with a twisting funnel that lifts riders and horses into the air. Fiery thunder cracks at the top, and with a roaring force, bodies are thrown clear across the desert. Back to the start. Scattered by the laws of this circle.

Tic shields his eyes, fighting against wind until he finds Christina near an upturned cart – her cravat covering her mouth and nose like a bandit. He pulls her between himself and their temporary shelter, protecting them both until eventually the whining of the storm fades.

It passes, but a sound persists. A quaking that shakes the ground beneath their feet. Tic looks up and something even bigger than the creature in the sea takes lumbering steps away from the ugly scene. Its upper body isn’t visible. Only four legs and three snouts that peek through the clouds.

“Sure you wanna stay here?” he can’t resist asking as Christina watches, awestruck.

The caravan is completely destroyed. Armor, swords, and other gear lay in the sand like debris. The few bodies left are lifeless and mangled, their expensive gear nothing more than shards.

Only the roman veles in his wolf pelt remains standing, a menacing look on his face. He reaches for his javelin, but Christina is faster. Without Tic noticing she’s moved from his side, she presses the blade of a stolen sword to the stranger’s neck.

Tic wants to tell her to stop, but before he can think to act, she dispassionately pushes it through. The veles gurgles blood and crumples.

Christina tests the weight of the sword in her hand.

“You didn’t have to kill him,” Tic says, stinging from the sand and hail and senseless violence.

“Is it really killing if there’s no death? When he reanimates, which he will, we’ll be long gone. I bought us time.”

“Justify it however you want. Doesn’t matter. There’s shit inside us that needs fixing so we can be worthy of leaving. Instead, you double down on what got us stuck here in the first place.”

“You still don’t get it,” Christina marvels as she stalks closer. “Repenting is a _scam_. Your useless baptism proved that. You want there to be a point to all this, and there isn’t one. So, no, Hell’s gate won’t suddenly open for us because we feel better about ourselves. It will open,” she licks her lips and her eyes shine like a demon possessed, “because if it does not, we will make this place the empty husk of death and misery described in the Good Book, wreaking havoc only those of our blood can.”

God and the Devil. Good and evil. Benevolence and malice. Tic tenses his jaw. For all her irreligiosity, Christina is fire and brimstone.

“The gate will open if it knows what’s good for it,” she continues, pressing the sword’s hilt into his hand. “I hope you understand now. Otherwise you never will, and you’ll never leave.”

He’s quiet, but she doesn’t let him look away. Not until he swallows and nods.

Together, they gather only what they need. Tic picks up a gambeson and a belt. Christina pushes plate armor to his chest and he sighs, donning it. They tie and buckle each other in. Outfitted for the tournament. White steel, gold detail.

Christina gleams. Tic wilts.

Somehow she finds a war horse. Beastly with open wounds from the storm, though it doesn’t seem bothered by its physical state. Christina hoists herself up into the saddle and holds out a hand to Tic.

He doesn’t budge, gauntlets clanking as his hands go to his hips.

“Let me ride in front.”

Christina is a natural in the saddle, throwing long hair off her shoulder. Like a golden knight in a white cape. She keeps her hand held out. And when she answers, it’s not unkind.

“You’ll ride bitch or not at all. Final offer, Atticus.”

* * *

Riding into Purgatory is like waking up from a deep sleep. A hop, skip, and a jump away from living. And for the first time since smelling death and tobacco, Tic sees the color green on something other than army fatigues. There are grassy hills, lush trees, and creeks winding in between. Tic’s never been one for the country, always a city boy at heart, but there’s something to be said of nature’s splendor.

If this isn’t Paradise, what is?

Tic turns his face up to the wide blue sky, warmed by the sun high overhead.

They enter the tournament grounds, and immediately Tic senses the biggest difference of all. Drifting among tents, stables, latrines, and fighting pits are people who look neither dead nor alive. In limbo, they just are.

The only odd sight is a herd of shoggoths grazing in a small, enclosed pasture. He nudges Christina’s shoulder, and she lifts a hand to shade her eyes, searching with a squint.

“Would you look at that? Finally some beauty in this godforsaken place.”

Tic can’t help but agree.

Their plates of armor jostle noisily as they dismount, leaving their horse to drink water and eat hay. Christina pats its neck and whispers a spell. Skin and tissue stitch back together until it’s healed.

“Would’ve been nice to do that before my foot spent the whole ride digging into its ribcage.”

“What stopped you from doing it yourself?”

“I only know one spell by heart, and it’s the one you taught me.”

She hums. “I’ll teach you this one, too, if we get a chance before you leave.”

“Before _we_ leave,” Tic corrects, inspecting himself and their surroundings. He doesn’t catch Christina’s fond eye roll as she makes for the registration tent.

He unsheathes his sword, and worry begins to take root. The blade is heavy and foreign in his hand. Boot camp doesn’t prepare a soldier for 50 knights bludgeoning each other to death in the dirt.

Tic has no idea what he’s getting himself into.

“We’re in, but we’ll need to think of crests for ourselves. Protocol,” Christina says when she returns. “I know what I want.”

“Braithwhite family crest?”

Christina does a short twirl. Her cape sports a gory mess, like the figure of a person violently shedding skin.

“What the fuck is that?” he asks, disgusted.

“Freedom,” she answers. “Now you. How ‘bout them Cubs?”

“Nah. I got this.” He thinks of his family birthmark and it appears, emblazoned on the front of his armor. Pressed into the metal as if it had always been there. And Tic can almost imagine himself, a feudal lord of a noble house, with an armorer to custom forge every piece. The House of Freeman – already blessed with an heir in George.

The stink of the pits grows stronger as Christina leads them to the fenced-in arena where they’ll fight. An earlier bout leaves pools of blood and urine. Caretakers shovel in fresh dirt, but it doesn’t help much.

There are stands on all sides, covered in colorful canopies. Jaunty music, drums and horns, plays from the seats nearest the pit. In the best seat sits the curly-haired ruler presiding over the tournament. He sits and watches. Short beard, intelligent face, tunic and cloak giving him away as the emperor the champion knight spoke of.

Tic looks at Christina and sees her wheels turning, probably plotting how to win so that she can ingratiate herself, should she decide to stay. Tic thinks it’s a waste. A distraction from what their goal should be: the two of them escaping Hell together.

He tries one last time to convince her. She’s already putting on her helmet and choosing her weapon from a nearby rack.

“Maybe the gate is around here. Maybe we don’t have to fight at all.”

“Atticus,” she drawls. “Indulge me, just this once. We’ll consider it an even trade for my faithful service. Plus, you’re practically a chivalric knight already. What was it your uncle-daddy said? ‘You’re a good boy and an even better man.’”

“Ji-Ah show you that?”

“No.” She tugs the strap on his chest plate until it’s secure. “I heard the old-fashioned way. By eavesdropping.”

Christina smiles wickedly, slamming shut the visor on his helmet. “Remember. Stay on your feet and aim for their heads.”

The advice is good, but nothing can prepare someone for this fight.

The melee is a free-for-all. From fence to fence is pure chaos. Far too many knights pack in and crash against each other – a barrage of heavy hits, helmets battered until they buckle.

Thunder cracks against his temples suddenly. His ears ring and his brain feels scrambled. All he can focus on is trying to stand upright long enough to win, because deep down he already knows Christina is somewhere taking to this violence like a homecoming.

And if getting hit is hard, hitting is somehow harder. His wrists ache with every attempt. Metal on metal, never reaching skin. The shock shoots through his bones until his arms are numb. From there, it doesn’t take much to drop his sword, kicked away in the shuffle before he can grab it again.

The nearest weapon to replace it is a morning star, courtesy of a downed knight. In his hands, it becomes a homerun hitter. Tic’s first at-bat. Damn near takes a man’s head clean off swinging for the fences.

He hears a roar. Not the crowd at Wrigley Field, but the shrill cries of shoggoths that multiply on mutated vocal cords as they’re let into the pit. Worse than lions at the hippodrome. They bite into and skewer knights, ripping off helmets with heads still in them. The slaughter sends flecks of blood spraying in a red arc. Tic purses his lips, trying not to heave.

It’s distracting enough that he only just narrowly dodges a sharp swinging tail from one direction and the tip of a spear from another. He ducks and dips, avoiding brutal hits as he struggles to find his bearings again.

That’s when he sees her. Poleaxe in hand. Gleefully hammering away at the heads of knights three times her size. Their bodies collapse into neat piles. Easy meals for monsters. She lets loose a sharp whistle and the shoggoths fall back to her position obediently. As above, so below. Christina has the magic touch in every plane of existence she occupies.

An imposing figure with a serpent staff steps into his line of sight then. A ruffled collar frames a stern face and a long beard. Tic spots _semper eadem_ – “always the same” – on the knight’s coat of arms. Queen Elizabeth I’s motto.

It’s an oddity – one that leaves Tic open for a cheap shot that knocks him to the ground. He gasps for breath on impact, desperately pulling off his helmet. His vision blurs and he feels himself sinking not for the first time. Mud, blood, and piss, mixing with the sweat soaking his gambeson. 

He can hear something. A voice trying to reach him from far away. But every sound is muted static until Christina yanks him to his feet, the shoggoths forming a protective barrier between them and their enemies. It’s the moment he needs to catch his breath and readjust the grip on his morning star.

By the time the victory horns blow, the arena is a mess of torn limbs and entrails. Tic and Christina stand in the center of it all, shoggoths growling up at the stands.

The emperor doesn’t rise to clap with the rest of the cheering crowd. He stays seated, impassive above it all.

Purgatory shifts suddenly, transforming into something more nightmarish. Black fog rolls in, and Tic remembers this. The ground begins falling away into rivers of lava, and Tic remembers this too. The people become tar shadows, indistinguishable from each other. Pointed tails and dripping footsteps that squelch as they scramble toward the pit.

“Shit. ‘Stina. Fix this.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“One of us wants to be flayed by these motherfuckers, and it ain’t me. That’s what you said. It’s not real unless we make it real. And someone’s making it very real.”

Christina gulps, shamefaced as she looks at Tic. It’s as close to an apology as he’ll receive for the grand blunder that is this fucking tournament.

Their shoggoths are the only things in Hell that don’t turn against them. They jump at the shadows that close in, and Tic knows it’s their one chance to escape. With instincts sharpened in crumbling manors and cursed tombs, he takes Christina’s hand and runs.

He doesn’t know where he’s leading them, just that they need a miracle. Green fields turn into steep cliff sides. A rock wall cracks up through trails of lava, blocking the last escape route. It’s a dead end in every direction. The construct dissolves more and more into a worse Hell than either could’ve imagined.

Tic breathes deep, sensing something. A truth unmasked. There was never a physical gate. Only this: the flame dancing in his palm, sparked by a force that wants him to live.

He holds out his hand, pleading silently for Christina to trust him.

Enemies approach from behind, but he doesn’t feel fear now. Not when home is close enough to touch.

All they need to do is make a wish together – one last spell, achieving what only those of their blood can.

* * *

“A child’s major attention has to be concentrated on how to fit into a world which, with every passing hour, reveals itself as merciless.”

\- _Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone_

* * *

Hell is a birthday party in April. It’s Winthrop House full of shouting kids and crepe paper streamers. It’s Ruby stepping out of her car, pulling off her sunglasses, and seeing Leti jog out to the curb with a list of things she needs help with before even saying hello.

It’s lugging her guitar and fender amp to the backyard by herself while Montrose watches from the porch, looking musty as usual.

It’s sweating in her nicest dress as she shoos those same shouting kids away from rooms that house potentially dangerous magical artifacts.

It’s wondering why she came at all – until eventually she finds George. He stares up at mismatched frames and nearly a decade’s worth of memories Ruby’s been absent for.

The one he can’t take his eyes off, though, has pride of place in the long hallway.

Mr. Fix-It, back from war with more muscles and the same bad luck. He looks into Leti’s old Kodak Retina in black and white, reading glasses hanging from his shirt collar. All she sees now is a man who knows something he’s not telling.

“What are you doing in here, birthday boy?” She rests a hand on his head. At eight years old, he’s getting tall but still not as tall as her. “You should be playing with your friends. Having _fun.”_

George shrugs, chewing his cheek, and any other adult would tell him to fix his face. Show some respect when a grownup is speaking. But Ruby knows what it’s like to be short a loving parent. She sees the hurt rather than the insolence.

Still, she doesn’t have any soft words to tether him to the ghost in the picture. They look alike but in the way fathers and sons sometimes do. A shared smile and other phantom similarities. There’s enough Leti and even Eloise to make Ruby forget there’s any Tic in him at all.

“Hey. I got you a little extra something.” She reaches into her jacket pocket, pulling out a handful of his favorite candies.

“You didn’t have to, Auntie,” he smiles at last. And she did, because Ruby knows how to repay a kindness. He holds one candy back out to her and, per the rules, she takes it. There’s a bigger present waiting to be unwrapped with the rest, but this right here is only for them.

She tugs him closer, and like magic, he sags into her. Just a boy tired beyond his years.

She counts to ten before tipping up his chin.

“Now, come back outside. I’m playing your favorite. Might even teach you the chords if you stop looking like someone stole your lunch money.”

* * *

Leti doesn’t know why it always ends up this way.

She and Ruby can be laughing and singing along to the radio one moment then arguing the next. It’s this simmering thing, as if neither has the heart to take it further. They can steam but they can’t blow up.

They just finished tidying up after George’s party. Dishes washed and leftovers put away, bringing order to chaos. Together, they make a powerful duo – tested on the battlefield of the South Side apartment where they grew up. The trick is in splitting the work to make it go by faster, with good music and silly gossip.

But these days, any time spent together devolves into _this._

Ruby’s braced against the counter, as far from Leti as she can get without leaving the kitchen entirely. Hurt, quiet, and so very still. Leti can see her sister’s walls go up. Evidence of that old familiar itch she must get in her bones to disappear into her gilded tower in Hyde Park.

Leti did this, but she didn't mean to. Losing rare warmth is a high price to pay for mentioning the worst day of their lives.

“Ruby… I'm just saying, unless we’re talking about some spell or deciphering a page of the _Book,_ I never see you. I'm worried.”

“You don’t need to be.”

“This is what I’m talking about. You think you’re invincible, and that none of us would be broken if anything happened to you. Do you even know how terrifying it was, to be told you were dead? To find you in that house–”

“I never needed saving,” Ruby raises her voice finally. And it’s the first time Leti’s heard her side of the story in all these years, so she crosses her arms and lets her speak, uninterrupted. “The effects of that spell wore off as soon as the ritual was over. By the time you turned up the next day, I was already awake. Dizzy as hell, but awake. So, drop this while you still can.”

Leti sighs, reaching out. “Okay. But am I even allowed to miss my sister?”

“Not if what you miss is a doormat.”

They hold each other’s stare, both wanting the great impasse of their relationship to fall away somehow. Leti tries and fails to think of something to say that might undo years of strain. She’s at a loss.

Ruby shakes her head and leaves, shouldering past a nosy Montrose as she goes. He enters to see Leti turned away, composing herself.

“Same old shit?”

“If it is,” Leti shakes her head, bone-tired, “what the hell am I supposed to do about it?”

“Maybe see things from her side? I’m not saying forgive the bitch.” He catches her hackles raise. “Not Ruby. The other one.”

“Who? _Christina?”_

Montrose nods.

“I don’t understand it. Hell, I don’t want to,” he starts, voice a hushed whisper like it’s the family secret he’s telling. “But sometimes we love people we shouldn’t, and it hurts all the same when we lose them. Ruby’s got all that grief and no way of sharing it with the folks supposed to be holding her down.”

He gives her a pointed look.

Leti wishes he wasn’t so right.

Outside, Ruby storms off, slipping into her car and turning the engine over with more force than necessary.

She’s too preoccupied to see the man hidden in shadows, collar of his coat shielding his face. He sinks lower in the seat of his own car. There are binoculars, a notepad, and the packed meal his wife made him. Stakeout necessities.

The binoculars have their obvious use. Observing the occupants of the boarding house. Gathering as much information as he can from across the street and up a ways.

The notepad too. He scribbles down every detail of the day. And after several such missions, he’s growing satisfied with what he’s learned about the last living descendent of Titus Braithwhite.

As for his meal, well. His wife is a saint of a woman, but she can’t cook for shit.

He checks his watch, tucks away his notepad, and leaves the quiet street heading for Chicago’s Near West Side.

* * *

Auntie Ji calls it the distinct sound of George – that chopping noise the baseball card in his spoke makes as he zips up and down the block. From afternoon ‘til evening, he’s got places to be. The park, the dairy for candy and a coke, then back home again.

Sometimes he rides over to Walter’s to watch the game, leaving his bike on the grass out front. Between innings, he’ll excuse himself to the bathroom and sneak into Walter’s father’s study. He has bookshelves that line the walls. Floor to ceiling. If George could, he’d have this many books. Instead, he settles for two a week from the library and whatever Dee thinks he’ll like.

On the best days, he leans his bike against the fence at his auntie’s. He never comes empty-handed, not when he knows nobody else is brave enough to bring her candy. She answers the door, giving him a look that says she thinks he should be anywhere else.

Still, she lets him in, sits him down at the kitchen table, and gives him a cold glass of lemonade.

“You ever had caviar, George?” is the kinda thing she asks. The answer is always no. “I got some left over. You’ll like it. Just don’t ask what it is.” And then she’s fixing him a slice of special bread with butter and caviar on top. It’s weird, but it doesn’t taste bad. Better than the sandwiches Pop-Pop makes for lunch.

Thing is, Auntie Ruby isn’t always home. Or, as Mama says, isn’t always in the mood for company. Today’s one of those days. He heads to the South Side instead, looking for something to do. That’s when he feels it again. The weird hunch that he’s being watched. It’s been like this for weeks, and he can’t shake it.

Every time he tries to tell Mama, she’s too busy to listen. Either she’s studying something secret in the basement or she’s helping Hip with the Guide Book. By the time it’s evening, she’s cooking dinner, exhausted before he’s even been sent to bed.

Auntie Ji tried. He’d had this sick feeling in his stomach playing baseball in the street one day. A strange man watched the whole time from beneath a tree, writing things down. White men on the North Side don’t stick out, but this one did. He never looked at the other kids – just him. So, he ran inside and told Auntie Ji what he could. By the time she came out to have a look, no one was there, just a pencil forgotten by the tree.

The not knowing keeps him up at night, driving him to practice his baseball swing in his pajamas. Always careful not to hit anything. His gut tells him something bad is coming. He wants to be ready when it does.

He wishes he had his bat now.

A car pulls up behind him on the street, front bumper nearly touching his back wheel. Another car tries to box him in from the side. Thankfully he knows this neighborhood like the back of his hand.

It’s easy on pure adrenaline. He squeezes through cars to get to the alley that takes him behind Denmark Vesey’s. He pedals so hard, he gets there in record time, dropping his bike by the back door.

Afternoons at Vesey’s are quiet. He can usually find Pop-Pop or Sammy in the back office, handling the accounts and restocking the small kitchen. He isn’t allowed past the door into the bar where alcohol is served. He barrels through today.

The only person he finds inside is Dee, tucked into a dark booth with a friend he’s seen her with sometimes, leaned in real close. He knows that’s grownup stuff.

It isn’t his business anyhow.

“Dee.” He barely gets the word out.

“George, what the hell are you doing here? You know the rules.”

But then she sees his face fall and rushes to him, steady hands on heavy shoulders.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” she demands, and George never cries, but the relief has him brushing his cheeks.

She settles him next to her friend in the booth, sneaking them both a coke from behind the counter. He sips his through a fancy straw and tells her everything. When he mentions the creep with the notepad, she asks for the pencil he left behind. 

“I got you, little man,” she promises by the end of it, tugging on his ear until he cracks a smile.

* * *

“Baby,” Dee hushes over the phone, tugging on the cord until it reaches her bed. “I think I finally figured it out.”

After weeks of research at the library, spying from the seat of her motorcycle, and getting up to every kind of magical no-good, she knows who wants George and why. It started simply enough. A basic spell cast on the pencil George found. Something like a reverse tracker that led her to a settlement house on Halstead Street.

The funny thing about white people not having magic is that they don’t know how to cover their asses otherwise. It takes nothing for Dee to find where they congregate – men and women, cloaked but not hooded, with the mark of the Caduceus sewn on to the breast – and only a few visits to catch an evil monologue that tells her everything she needs to know.

They want George’s blood so they can open a portal to hell. And from their house of magic and alchemy, they’ll use the latter to wield the former once more. The Staff of Hermes will grant them power to purify the circles of hell and conquer the seven planetary spheres. _Blah, blah, blah._

Hearing it makes Dee roll her eyes. Not because she finds the grandiose words far-fetched, but because she knows they think they’ll get away with it. George Freeman is protected, and what happened to her won’t happen to him.

“So, what’re we gonna do?” June asks. She’d been brought into Dee’s confidence long ago. A girl with a metal arm has no choice but to be honest about the magical shit plaguing her life. And June, from the South Side, too, was as trustworthy as they came.

“We’re calling in a favor with the strongest witch I know,” Dee sighs. “Let’s hope she’ll do it for George, ‘cause she sure as hell won’t do it for me.”

* * *

Before knocking on the door, Dee says a quick prayer.

Ruby’s been icy with her for almost as long as she can remember, and she respects that boundary as best she can. The reason why they aren’t on good terms isn’t lost on her. But if they can set aside their bad blood for George’s sake, she’ll consider it a win.

Leti is their last resort, and Dee knows her traditionalist approach to magic’ll only hold them back. Hell, she might think Dee needs an exorcism for even considering what she’s planning to do.

Thankfully, it doesn’t come to that. When Ruby opens the door, her expression goes from cold to warm as George steps forward, wrapping her up in a hug. Dee meets her gaze over his head, and a silent understanding passes between them.

She steps back from the threshold, letting the trio file into her fortress.

For this ritual to work, they’ll need three things. George’s spelled blood, Dee’s sacrifice, and someone to speak the words of Hermes Trismegistus.

Ruby hears the list and narrows her eyes. “You’re not cutting into that boy. Does he even know what this is for?”

“I told him.” Dee lifts her chin. “His mama waited too long. Magic found him, so I told _him_ about magic.”

George looks up from the bookshelves in the basement, fingers trailing along dusty old spines. “I know now, Auntie. I’m ready to help.”

“Hand, then. And only as much blood as the ritual calls for. I’m healing you right after. No cool scars for you, George Freeman. I see what you’re after,” she snorts, watching him as he reaches for an old sabre mounted on the wall. One of Christina’s toys. George ducks his head.

“I think we’re ready. Everything’s set up. All that’s left to do, is to just do it,” June announces, voice nervous. She’s cleared a space in the basement, though half of it is cordoned off by medical curtains.

Ruby takes position, holding an ivory handled knife. First she cuts George’s palm. She tries her best to be gentle. He’s only a boy, she tells herself, cradling his small hand in hers. He doesn’t cry.

“You’re being so brave. Braver than anyone I’ve ever known,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

Then she cuts Dee’s, less gently though not with any venom.

They press their palms together, George gifting Dee just a little of his spelled blood. Some of Titus, some of Hanna. Enough to grant her access to darkness she’d never know otherwise.

Words attributed to Hermes fill the basement with Ruby as their vessel. George looks up at Dee and she looks back, squeezing his hand for courage.

“Command your soul to travel to a place, and it will be there faster than your command. Command it to cross the ocean, and it will do so, not as having passed from place to place, but simply as being there. If you wish to break through the universe itself and look upon the things outside, it is within your power.”

Ruby finishes the incantation and takes the knife firmly in her grip. Steady and true. She plunges it deep into Dee’s heart.

She gasps once before collapsing into June’s waiting arms.

* * *

Hell is ugly and warped. Dee can’t see straight, can hardly feel her limbs at all. She hears violence and hate all around her. The sound of people dying, gasping for their last breath as metal cracks against metal. Bodies pass through her own as if she’s the ghost and not them.

She has no clue where she is, only what she’s gotta find.

Her attention is drawn to a strange man, high above the rest. An Egyptian pharaoh, dipped in ink, whose red gaze finds hers through the clashing and the screams.

It takes every bit of her willpower to look away, to focus on her mission. She doesn’t have long.

She sees it then. The Staff, two gold serpents entwining. This is what the cult wants. This is what they were willing to stalk and terrorize George to get.

A man wields it like a weapon, smashing it into a distracted knight, who drops to the ground, pulling off his helmet to catch his breath. Dee rushes forward then, because she knows that face.

She knows that knight.

She screams his name. And he scrambles in the mud. She tries to pull him up, but they’re on different planes.

She has a mission to complete, she repeats to herself, trying to hold on to what’s true in a place that feels like lies.

As she steps back from his body, an apology on her lips, the man holding the Staff is brought to his knees by another knight, one who helps Tic to his feet. Dee watches them as long as she can, sensing something she can’t understand. Not yet at least.

The Staff lays in the mud, forgotten. The most important magical artifact according to the crazies on Halstead Street, and here it is. She grabs it, holding it to her chest.

She doesn’t have long—

* * *

Ruby waits as long as she can wait, but Hell can’t have Diana Freeman. Not yet.

She speaks the words of the Mark of Cain, though experimentation over the years has made the mark itself unnecessary. Air fills Dee’s lungs as she’s brought back, heaving as she comes to. In her and George’s joined hands is the Staff.

The drive to Leti’s is strange. Dee had thrown up in the basement, and Ruby spends half the car ride looking in the rearview mirror at her sickly pallor.

“Let me know if you need to throw up again. I’ll pull over. It’s no problem. Just don’t do it in the car. These mats are custom mohair.”

Dee grumbles, leaning her head on June’s shoulder.

As for George, he’s fine enough in the passenger seat. He stares at his hand, marveling at what he can’t see.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Ruby asks quietly.

George looks thoughtful as he considers her question. She can tell he’s got plenty he could say, but a kid as smart as George knows how to pick his words carefully.

“Is this why you and Mama aren’t close?”

“Well,” Ruby breathes out. “That is a very astute observation. It’s got something to do with it, but not all. Anything else?”

“Can everyone do magic?”

“Everyone like us, who wants to learn. But it takes practice. If you wanna know more, and your mama doesn’t mind, I can show you some things.”

George smiles, nodding before he looks out the window.

Ruby worries about Dee’s plan. The Staff will be kept deep beneath Leti’s with the bloggoth to guard it. At least until they can figure out a better solution. But she fears it’ll just place a bigger target on Winthrop House and the people who live there.

Dee had an answer for that, too, when Ruby voiced her concern.

_Let them try._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Shouts to Stew for being the best 🙏🏽


	3. Hello Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmares end and loved ones reunite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bottle episode for the girls

George marches to bed with sluggish steps while Dee beelines for the elevator. She rides down into the depths with June’s steady arms keeping her upright, Staff wrapped safely in her sweatshirt.

Ruby lingers in the doorway just long enough to make sure everyone is settled. And then she’s off again, keys jangling as she makes a quick exit.

There’s blood on the floor in the basement that needs cleaning. Evidence of dark rituals Ruby doesn’t mind in theory – if only they didn’t leave a mess behind.

She counts her blessings when Leti keeps her distance, arms crossed and suspicious. If she wants to talk, it’ll have to wait. The ritual is Dee’s to tell anyway.

Out on the front lawn, she pauses, surveying the perimeter of Winthrop House. It’s protected against certain evils. Leti’s no slouch. But she’s never been willing to go beyond what’s in the _Book of Names_ – spells that have the distinction of sitting right with her spirit and pleasing the ancestors.

The street is quiet. Neighbors in bright windows having dinner and watching Ed Sullivan. Nothing out of the ordinary. Perfectly mundane.

Maybe Dee is right. Maybe everything will be just fine.

* * *

Afternoon light shines through high windows. The radio plays a song Ruby hums along to. She opens cabinets for this and that, scratching sketches into her notebook, doing the work she’s always wanted to do.

It’s the first day she’s had to herself since chaperoning Dee’s field trip to Hell, and the basement is all hers. There’s a spell she’s been avoiding. A hurdle she’s been trying to overcome but can’t. Her brows knit together as she looks over her notes.

A vial of blood sits before her. She drums her fingers on the table as she thinks. There’s something she needs.

The radio crackles as she turns to the shelves behind her. She reaches out and stops, suddenly feeling off-kilter.

A shot signal becomes the noise of buzzing insects and whispering voices. The kind of strangeness that’s tough to track and tougher still to understand. Reality tends to bend slowly, almost imperceptibly, because the mind doesn’t want to notice

Sounds distort like a record playing backward, and movements slow while worlds zip past. Ruby forces down the panic even as heat draws sweat from her skin.

What she sees is the meeting of Hell and Earth, flickering in and out of reality, overlapping so briefly that she almost can’t believe her eyes.

When everything snaps back to normal, as if nothing had ever been amiss, she finally hears it.

A hoarse gasp. Shaking breaths that sound so much like—

Ruby rounds the table quickly, afraid of what she might not find.

* * *

Christina is covered in the sticky viscera of Hell.

Every synapse in her body is on fire. She can’t stand yet, hands and knees braced against the cold floor. She takes uneven breaths. Two in, one out.

And then arms are scooping her naked body up into a hug. She short-circuits, realizing who’s here to receive her on the other end of that leap of faith.

Ruby seems undaunted by the circumstances. Her dress is already staining, but her grip only tightens.

Christina can’t help herself as she wraps shaky arms around her middle, making the mess worse. She exhales the last of her uncertainty and squeezes her eyes shut.

When Ruby finally pulls away, rising to her full height, Christina presses her face to her hip, not ready to lose the precious contact anchoring her to this world.

She feels unmade.

“I’m sorry.” Christina’s voice is thin, but she means it.

Ruby swallows. Christina can’t see her. She doesn’t dare to look up.

“Good. I’m sorry too.” Ruby cards fingers through blood-soaked hair and it’s almost as if nothing’s changed.

* * *

Getting Christina and all her long limbs upstairs into the bath is a process. She falls asleep as Ruby’s hands work their magic to make her right.

She wakes in intervals, forgetting and remembering in seconds. The last time, she’s lucid just long enough to be put into a nightgown and tucked into Ruby’s bed.

“Where’d you come from?” she hears in the dark, but it’s faint and fading already.

It’s like this that she sleeps for an age. The kind of dreamless sleep she took for granted before death. 

In Hell, there’s no peace. One can slumber, but every moment is fraught with visions and memories of the darkest self. Granted, there’s hardly peace in life, especially for someone more sin than human.

And Christina is gluttony. Only now after everything does she feel the foreign sensation of being sated, for the first time since she was a gangly girl sitting on her mother’s lap.

It was a ritual of theirs to wait together in the cigar room, spying on the Sons of Adam through Father’s mirror. The men of the order grasped power with both hands, leaving their women to blossom or wilt in the shade of their benevolence.

Christina, unsatisfied with this arrangement, hungered for more.

She’s had it, and she’s over it.

Contentment feels like rest.

* * *

Breakfast is eggs, toast, and aspirin, arranged neatly on a tray by Christina’s bedside.

She doesn’t know how long she’s slept. Her mind and body are both groggy. Unsteady. And she feels sick to her stomach. But her legs are restless, so she gives in, struggling to her feet.

The world has changed – even if things seem unchanged.

The Hyde Park house still stands. The basement, as vaguely as she remembers it, looks familiar with key alterations. Ruby’s eccentricities as a witch coming into her own, making the home Christina unwittingly but not unhappily left her into a space for creation and experimentation.

Everything else might as well be alien. She explores with halting steps. Stairs are the first challenge. Technology is the second. Television sets, stereos, and appliances that feel space age.

If Ruby is here among these things, she doesn’t make her presence known.

Christina feels it, the wordless permission to take her time making peace with an Earth that spun on without her.

She eventually finds the garage. Her old love. There, a sexy red thing that must be Ruby’s, next to her Star Chief. She runs a hand along the pristine paint. Catalina Blue. Same as ever.

She sighs, crossing her arms.

Where she might fit into this, returned from the dead and magicless, is a problem in need of solving.

Briefly, she misses Tic’s companionship. A second brain to knock together with her own as they scramble in the dark for solutions.

* * *

To Ruby, Christina is a ghost slowly taking physical form.

Day one, the priority is equilibrium. Dee had been a mess after only a short time in Hell. Christina endured years. And she acclimates swiftly but painfully, teetering and tired. Ruby hangs back, trying to make sense of her wraithlike presence – a wish that’s come true in the strangest way.

On day two, Christina’s hair looks more like Ruby remembers. Veronica Lake in This Gun for Hire _._ Plucked from 1942. Dated in 1955. Practically ancient in 1964. Ruby wouldn’t have it any other way. A curling iron now sits on the counter in the powder room, at home among her things.

By day three, Christina’s eyeliner is sharp, and her wristwatch is set. She lingers in the basement on her own, reacquainting herself with the dusty collection of books housed there.

She even ventures outside, hands in her robe pockets, kicking at pebbles as she watches the morning exodus of good little worker bees filing out of the neighborhood. Men with briefcases. Some women too. She’s fidgety and unmoored, in desperate need of something to do with her hands.

At the end of the week, Christina puts on a record and fills a glass with wine. Some ancient bottle she finds deep in the cellar.

The wine is good, but the record is the best she’s ever heard. Different from what she remembers of the world before.

Ruby leaves to run errands, and when she pushes through the door that evening, she has a notion of what to expect. Loud music carries out to the street.

She’s never had this – someone waiting at home for her.

She sets down her purse and jacket in the foyer, slowly making her way to the sitting room. Christina finds her immediately and holds out a hand, summoning her closer until they’re both swaying to an irresistible rhythm.

“Show me the right dance for this one,” Christina requests, lips close to Ruby’s ear over the music.

Ruby takes her glass of wine, downs the dregs, and sets it aside so she can hold both her hands.

And then they’re twisting along to The Vandellas. Heat waves that make Ruby think of passages from that Nella Larsen story – the one that was tough to bear at first. But she thinks of it now. The dancing blaze of Chicago’s baked pavement and burning sidewalks hot under their feet.

It’s summer after all.

Their season.

* * *

Christina feels domestic.

It was a muscle she liked to stretch every now and then. Back before her great miscalculation led to something of a moratorium.

She can throw a punch and a perfect spiral, but she can bake a souffle and crack an egg with one hand too. That’s the bargain she made with herself as she stepped into dual worlds. Slacks for when she doesn’t want to be underestimated; dresses and pencil skirts for when she does. The whole kit and caboodle to go along with each.

It’s a fine line to walk, and she wants to see where she fits now that there’s no serum to make the sides tangible. Where is Christina Braithwhite most comfortable? Which pieces does she want to keep?

“Can I use the kitchen?” She finds Ruby by lamplight, glued to her notebook.

“You don’t have to ask permission. It’s your house, Christina.”

She freezes as she considers Ruby’s words.

“No. It isn’t anymore. Not really.” Then she’s sweeping from the basement, words carrying over her shoulder like an invitation. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

* * *

She moves gracefully. Pantry to ice box and back again until she has everything she needs. Apron over a form-fitting dress. Heels clacking on expensive tile.

Ruby watches from her seat on the counter, giving directions when needed. Salt and pepper by the stove. Mixing bowl above the sink.

The overhead light makes Christina look like June Cleaver… or a June Cleaver who fucks, kills, and has some concept of self beyond how she serves her husband.

It’s almost impressive when she manages to make something out of the ingredients Ruby keeps in stock. The finished product is good – and plated nicely enough to deserve a glowing review in the Tribune.

Their time together years ago didn’t leave room for moments like this. If Ruby ever knew Christina cooked, it was lost knowledge.

They eat there in the middle of the kitchen. Ruby perched on the countertop, Christina standing in her apron.

Ruby drinks it in. A quiet evening in a kitchen that smells divine.

“Hey,” she breaks the comfortable silence, “if this isn’t your home, where do you want to be?”

Christina straightens, swallowing down her last bite.

They’ve been cautiously navigating every encounter and conversation since her return. Ruby’s words are measured even now. For someone who wants straight talk as badly as she wants anything, it’s torture.

Christina needs her secrets, though. Her careful phrases and the wiggle room to be vague. So it surprises them both when the answer is neither careful nor vague.

“I want to be exactly where I am. But I don’t think that should obligate you to anything. And it doesn’t give me permission to waltz in after a decade just to lord over four walls and a roof you’ve made your own. Finders keepers, playground rules, or the right of conquest. Whatever you wanna call it. The house is yours.”

“So, for clarity’s sake,” Ruby says, careful even if Christina isn’t. “What’s the rule on finding you shivering like a stray cat in my lab?”

Christina doesn’t love the comparison, Ruby can tell. But she relaxes into bravery, holding Ruby’s gaze.

“Yours, too, unless you decide otherwise.”

That settles that.

* * *

“I see you found the rest of your wardrobe.”

Ruby watches Christina from the corner of her eye. The way she looks down at herself, flattening a hand to the fabric of her shirt and slacks approvingly. How she slowly tours the basement with loose shoulders and hands stuffed in her pockets.

There’s a half-pack of cigarettes on the worktable. She takes one for herself.

“When’d you pick up this habit?” Christina asks, cigarette dangling from her lips as she searches for a lighter. She finds it under papers and tokens.

“None of your business,” Ruby answers wryly. “When did you?”

“Right now. Feeling homesick for a little fire and smoke.”

Christina boosts herself on to the tabletop. She crosses her legs primly and watches Ruby work.

There’s an elephant in the room the size of Lake Michigan, and they avoid it deftly. Christina died and rose again, and Ruby’s spent the last week pushing down her need to understand how.

Instead, she keeps her back turned, going over the same broken spell that’s always given her grief.

Eventually she needs something from beside Christina, already almost done with her cigarette now, watching her with eyes that don’t miss a thing.

They’re close. Ruby stretches across the table, searching for the right book and an old talisman. Things she’s scoured the world for, hoping for a solution.

Her frustration is evident, so long fingers hold out an offering. Ruby-red lipstick leaves a mark on the paper. And when Christina takes a drag afterward, lips where hers had been, it might as well be a kiss.

“Once upon a time,” Christina begins, “there was a wicked witch who lived all alone.”

“Calling me wicked?” Ruby says without looking up.

“No. This particular witch had a fall from grace. Flew too close to the sun. But she was damn good at magic. And not so wicked actually.”

Ruby huffs. Christina has balls – with or without her potions.

“Right. You want to help?”

“If you don’t mind.”

Ruby steps back slightly, and Christina hops down, already scanning the pages of Ruby’s notes.

“Wait. This looks like—”

_Her_ spell.

But changed.

* * *

Together, they go over notes strewn across what was once Christina’s workspace.

There are sketches and words in languages Christina doesn’t entirely recognize. Ruby’s cabinets are stocked with new and familiar items, pouches and vials of otherworldly ingredients for spellcasting.

William lays where he always has, and a new woman, beautiful and shapely upon her cot, has a red crown to envy.

Christina feels at home here, even stripped of her own abilities. There’s something about being around Ruby that feels like witnessing a god at work. She might mourn her loss, but she knew the cost of coming back.

Watching Ruby is worth every penny.

She props herself against the table, reading over Ruby’s shoulder as she thumbs through pages of a worn notebook.

“All the time I’ve wasted cleaning up blood, guts, and skin whenever I need a change in scenery,” Ruby sighs. “Think I might be done with that, if I can crack this spell.”

Christina nods. “Improving upon my life’s work.”

“Damn right.”

Christina can only smile as she looks from page to page, scrutinizing. “This is all very impressive. I’m sure you know that already. But if you ever want a second pair of eyes that might understand, I’d be happy to play lab assistant.”

“You aren’t afraid of landing yourself back in Hell? This isn’t the Lewis and Freeman family magic show. No baptisms, no righteous martyred ancestors. Assisting me means accepting that I deal in much darker magic.”

Christina fights a smile, licking her lips instead.

Who does Ruby think wrote that playbook?

“Oh. You won’t go to Hell, Ruby.” Her words drip with the thrill she feels at hearing Ruby commanding every bit of her power. An expert at her craft, where divinity is the sole province of black folks. Ruby might be the most powerful woman alive. It makes Christina inch closer, wanting to breathe the rarefied air in Ruby’s atmosphere. “Not unless you want to rule over it.”

Ruby purses her lips at the misdirection. “But will you? Someday, after a second death. Back to the Eighth Circle with Billy Graham’s crazy ass.”

“I’m undecided.” The answer is flippant, and Ruby points a finger at Christina’s innocent look.

“A privilege. Still just daddy’s spoiled heir.”

Their clothes brush as Christina takes up more of Ruby’s space, hand resting close to hers on the table. “Maybe I am. Thing is, they say wisdom and maturity come with age.” Long lashes flutter prettily. “A privilege I was denied. Hell spat me out unchanged. I hope you can forgive me.”

Ruby’s heartbeat quickens. She’s thirty-something, and at her big age, she knows better than to fall for the devil’s sweet words.

But if she’s honest with herself, this back and forth is all she’s ever wanted.

* * *

Each day is a careful dance. Distance as they push each other’s buttons, rediscovering their limits – a provocation quickly followed by the realization that neither really gives a fuck.

It’s a way to be cautious without being apart.

Crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s.

* * *

Conversations become easier.

Ruby knows the basics, the beginning of a story about consequences and hubris. A round trip to Hell on the devil’s dime.

But Christina finally gives more.

“Jesus. _Christina,”_ Ruby breathes, horrified and concerned by the end of it. “Why aren’t you fucked up after all that?”

Christina shrugs.

“Feels like I was away on some miserable vacation. Imagine only having Atticus for company.” Ruby hears the fondness undercutting her words, giving her a look. Christina purses her lips, bashful and trying to find the right way to explain herself. “What they don’t tell you in all those fancy tomes is that it takes a certain forbearance to make it through. It’s nearly impossible to endure alone. Having a partner helps.”

“Sounds like y’all really went through it. Forged some kind of bond. You aren’t gonna go look for him now that you’re here?”

“Not until he wants me to. I’ll know when I know.”

Ruby doesn’t get it, but she doesn’t need to.

“Will you let me keep an eye on you? Just for a little while. Spending half an eternity in Hell has to take a toll,” she asks before scribbling one last observation in her notebook. “Shit. And the gate delivering you to this basement. That can’t be a coincidence.”

Warmth settles in Christina’s chest. This basement wasn’t the destination.

“You’re welcome to do whatever you want with me, Ruby.”

Bold words when they’re both reaching the end of their rope, frayed and ready to snap.

Ruby closes her notebook, watching Christina carefully. She clocks the innuendo. And if this is what she thinks it is, she knows she has to be careful in how she proceeds.

These are deep and dangerous waters.

The basement feels darker, the air thicker. She tests the boundaries of Christina’s invitation, stepping closer, threading their fingers together.

Christina doesn’t move, but she does look down, eyes on their joined hands.

“I’ve never been with an older woman before.” The last syllable hangs in the air, Christina’s monied affectation sounding like a tease.

Yet everything else about her belies the joke.

Ruby can imagine why. The last time they were like this, with Christina open and wanting, Ruby fucked her to sleep so she could steal her blood. If she has reservations after that, far be it from Ruby to judge.

But the Ruby of then is not the Ruby of now. She’s learned more lessons than she cares to count.

Ruby leans in, pressing full lips to the apple of Christina’s cheek, following that old, hot path until they’re gently bumping noses.

Christina looks up then, bold again.

“Huh. I’m your first?” Ruby asks, voice soft. Christina nods, catching on to the game. “I’ll take care of you then. I promise.”

* * *

Ruby won’t lie.

She took pleasure in how illicit it felt to be picked up at a bar by a smooth-talking stranger. To have the blood sucked from her palm and be fucked on every surface of a house she wouldn’t set foot in otherwise.

But then, without her say-so, an escape became a home, lived in and safe. Christina and Ruby’s for a summer.

The first and last time she had Christina in their bed, she tried to compartmentalize. She couldn’t let herself enjoy it, not when she felt the betrayal as she was committing the sin.

The distance she put between herself and that act only made it stickier. Because the thing she learned about Christina that night was that when she finally closed her eyes, she looked peaceful and well-loved. All pouting lips and dark bruises blooming on her breasts.

She couldn’t possibly be responsible for so much fear and upheaval when she’d spent hours pliant, yearning, with Ruby pressed between her thighs.

Years have passed, and Ruby still wonders why she had to pay Leti’s price. It felt like Eloise buying two of every outfit all over again. Leti and Ruby in matching Sunday dresses.

If Leti’s man had to die, so did Ruby’s. Those were the terms of sisterhood.

* * *

It’s only after that Ruby finds the courage to broach the subject.

“I hurt you. Don’t say I didn’t.”

“Then I won’t. It’s not something I think about, one way or another.”

“Well,” Ruby breathes, feeling the space between them, “I think about it. That last time together, how you were laying there like some femme fatale who only came alive for me. It was a lot of responsibility, being loved so deeply, so quickly. I couldn’t understand you. Who devotes themselves to a stranger after one night?”

Christina parts her lips, and Ruby thinks she might try to explain herself. Something about magic in a dive bar and how inevitable it all felt. Ruby scoots closer and finishes before she can.

“I didn’t think I deserved it.”

_“Ruby.”_

It’s an aggrieved whisper from too far away for her liking, so warm hands settle against a sharp jaw. Ruby catches Christina’s eye, speaking gently. “I know better now. Even if sometimes it feels too late.”

Christina furrows her brow, lips twisting as she fights the way her face wants to crumple. Always so in control of her feelings yet failing at it now. Ruby leans in for a kiss, hoping actions can speak louder than words.

Still, there’s an oath that’ll serve them both well. The only apology that means a damn thing. A promise never to deceive. Better yet, a deal with fair terms.

Ruby pulls back from the kiss, Christina’s eyes opening slowly.

“If I have your loyalty, you have mine. That’s how this works from now on,” Ruby says.

Christina gives one firm nod, and then Ruby’s leaning down to press a kiss to her chest, just above her heart.

* * *

Breaks between fucks are sacrosanct. Always have been. A strange, liminal space where nights last days.

Christina lays on her stomach, leaning over the edge of the bed. She lights up a cigarette in an elegant holder, as fancy as she pleases, and takes a drag.

Ruby makes a show of holding the sheet to her breasts as she reaches out. Lidded eyes and full lips. Something for the devil watching in her bed, dimpled chin propped upon a fist.

They go back and forth like this in near dark, moonlight the only thing casting a pale glow across their bed. It’s a hot night and the window’s open just enough to catch the breeze.

“It’s almost funny. You had me five times tonight and I don’t even know who the president is.” Christina fingers the edge of the sheet keeping Ruby modest, but she doesn’t pull.

“Looking for a news bulletin, white girl?” Ruby blows smoke in Christina’s unbothered face. “Think I’m gonna be the one to sit here all night telling you about the state of the union? Civil unrest and the Missile Scare?”

“No. I suspect that’d bore us both half to death.” Ruby smirks, and Christina doesn’t blink, leaning dangerously close to steal back her cigarette. “Who won Best Picture?”

“When? ‘56?”

Christina hums a yes.

“Wouldn’t know.”

Christina’s gaze is permission to continue, as if she wants a different kind of catching up altogether. So Ruby keeps spilling. Things she hasn’t put words to in so long.

“That year was tougher than the rest. Not a damn thing was back to normal yet. And don’t think it was all about you. I didn’t spend every waking moment in mourning. Instead, I let it make me. I did everything I wanted to do. Became the witch I wanted to be.”

“Can’t imagine Leti dealing as elegantly with her loss.”

“She had to be strong for George,” Ruby supplies, thinking back. “I wasn’t in a place to help when he came along. Don’t know if I would have after everything, even if I could. Trying selfishness on for size has its drawbacks. So, Ji-Ah stepped in. The bitch who had you hanging like a coat on a rack. Thick as thieves now. Practically sisters.”

Christina absorbs her answer with a sharp breath. The Ji-Ah and Leti mess isn’t one she expected. There’s more to it, but she’s always hated picking at scabs.

“You don’t like the boy?” she asks instead.

“I didn’t say that. I love him. He’s my blood.”

“But blood’s not _why_ you love him.”

Christina’s challenge makes Ruby shrug. Still, she can’t fight a smile as she speaks. “He’s sweet. Always brings me wine candy from the corner store whenever he thinks I need cheering up.”

“Oh, how gallant. I like him already.”

“That’s George. Sneaks into your heart whether you want him to or not. Tic better not let him down.”

Christina doesn’t think he will. Not the Tic desperate to fight through Hell to get home, who had a broken father and gave up his chance to break that cycle by sacrificing himself for something even more important.

She’s seen inside Atticus Freeman, and she’s confident George is in safe hands.

Their shared cigarette burns to the end, so she stubs it out.

“Now, tell me what Ruby Baptiste’s been up to, besides receiving sweets from nice boys when she’s sad.” She reaches for Ruby, tugging her closer through the mess of sheets. Legs tangled together. One pillow to share. “Conquering the dark arts? Exploring space and time?”

Ruby laughs, too fearless to ever be timid. Christina spots the warmth in her cheeks and the sudden brightness of her eyes anyway. “Some of both,” she answers with a shake of her head, and her grip on Christina tightens like a woman who’s known hunger. “All that and nothing to write home about. You know, the thing I wanted most was the one thing I couldn’t have. So, what was all that power worth?”

Christina hears the unspoken part.

She’d had the same realization long ago in a tower as she considered crossed lines and hopes of forgiveness.

What was all that power worth without love?

* * *

Christina can barely stay awake, exhausted and tucked into Ruby’s side.

“Where’s music in all this?” she asks. It’s the magic she remembers best and misses most. Ruby shining under hazy lights, lost in the last song of the night.

Ruby smiles, looking young and full of promise. A Ruby from before Christina ever knew her.

“Somewhere out there, in another world, I’m a star. Hit records and people screaming my name in a packed house. Rock, blues, you name it. I’m that bitch.”

“Hiram’s orrery.”

“Mhm. I still play sometimes. On special occasions, for special people.”

Christina bats her eyelashes.

“Just catch me in the right mood, pretty girl. I know your type,” Ruby whispers, brushing back Christina’s hair until her eyes flutter closed, chest rising and falling steadily.

* * *

Sunlight stirs Christina into wakefulness. The more she wakes, the clearer she hears low humming and the rustle of someone undressing.

She sits up slowly, propped up on elbows.

Somehow she isn’t thrown by the sight of William pulling off his necktie in front of the vanity. He catches her eye in the mirror, smiling back through its reflection.

The warmth of that smile erases any doubt.

“Ruby,” she whispers her discovery.

“This isn’t how I wanted your day to start. Me like this. Probably freaking you the hell out.”

“No. If anything, it’s poetic.”

If William meant a great deal to her – justifying the way she stepped into his shoes after his death – Ruby had the same right to his body now.

Ruby tilts her head, not disagreeing. “I was just about to put on something more _comfortable._ After, I have work to take care of downstairs. Come on down, if you feel like it.”

Christina nods. She nearly asks why she’s wearing William at all, but the moment passes.

* * *

That doesn’t mean she drops it.

“Ruby,” she starts. The basement is quiet save for a tinny song playing over the radio. Even a whisper feels like it’s disrupting Ruby’s work. “Why the suit and tie this morning?”

“That? Not my usual going-out attire. But I had to see to a few things,” Ruby answers offhandedly, barely looking up from her books and potions.

Christina keeps quiet, but her eyes beg for more details.

Ruby gives in with a quirk of her lips.

“Ever wonder what happens when someone disappears with no beneficiary? Especially someone too rich for their own good? Enough years go by, their assets default to the state.”

She glances up to catch Christina’s panicked look and considers drawing out her suffering. Christina Braithwhite. Penniless.

But she’s not that cruel.

“It’s amazing what you can stop from happening when you’re wearing a white man’s skin. Just say something with the right authority and you generally get what you want.” Ruby returns to her notes, though her voice is dark and teasing as she finishes. “The good news is Christina Braithwhite’s been found safe and sound at long last and can now be reunited with her vast fortune.”

“It’s a miracle really. Do they give medals for this sort of thing?” Christina snakes her arms around Ruby from behind, chin resting on her shoulder.

Ruby shakes her head, one hand on her notebook and the other on Christina’s arms where they rest against her waist.

“Congratulations. Your bougie ass won’t be poor.”

She accepts the kiss planted on her cheek as thanks, at least for now.

* * *

A week passes.

Days are productive. Nights are too.

They cook and share meals, tasted on wooden spoons. The telephone sits off the hook and not a soul thinks to disturb their peace. Even George stays away.

Their spell, that difficult thing that gave Ruby trouble for so long, finally begins to yield.

The bubble will burst eventually, but until then, the outside world can wait.

* * *

Ruby holds Christina to her lap with a slick grip, panting heavily as their breasts brush together.

Then Christina unwraps her arms from around Ruby’s shoulders.

She pushes back her own long hair before cupping Ruby’s jaw to kiss her properly. Better than the messy scraping of teeth they’d settled for as she rode blessed fingers.

The pulse pounding in her ears fades. Music playing distantly from the corner of the room finally registers.

She loves the way 1964 sounds. She loves how it looks on Ruby, too, who was stunning before but something even more breathtaking now.

Christina feels herself under someone’s shade again. Only now, she welcomes it.

Her mind wanders for a split second before Ruby presses wet kisses to her neck, below her ear, waiting for her to come down.

She likes it, the constant connection. The hand attached to her hip, to her wrist, to her ribs when they’re in bed or working or driving. Whether someone can or can’t see. Lazily talking through the night, Ruby pressing herself close with the sheets kicked to the foot of the bed or giving Christina space to catch her breath as she kisses her thighs instead. She keeps them tethered with a touch.

If Ruby tries not to – doubting whether it’s welcome while knowing it’s what she needs – Christina reaches out instead. Fingertips ghosting along skin, feeling Ruby’s rapid pulse before she draws her in for a kiss. Thoughtlessly thumbing across a brown nipple as she whispers a story she’s never shared before. Intimacy they just can’t do without anymore.

She needs a cigarette.

* * *

It’s silent in the early hours until Christina drags their turntable to the back door, hoping the cord will magically stretch to accommodate her decadent wish.

When it does, she puts on a record. Something of Ruby’s she’s never heard before that sounds the way morning feels.

Birds sing and crickets get their final chirps in before light crests the treetops

It feels strange, but it always does at first. Christina finds _calm_ to be something she has to settle into like a stinging hot bath.

She lights a cigarette and opens the morning paper, her robe slipping off a shoulder.

There’s a story about the recent Surgeon General’s Report. A curiosity that has her raising a brow. She skims the piece, takes another puff, and turns the page.

It’s here that Ruby finds her a while later, after she’s had what little sleep she can before the day begins in earnest.

She joins her in the garden, her own robe tied loosely, and slides a warm hand inside Christina’s, holding her close as they sit side by side, hip to hip, taking in the sunrise.

* * *

_Ask every person if he’s heard the story. And tell it strong and clear if he has not._

_That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory. Called Camelot._

* * *

Tic hears the record first. Billie Holiday telling him it ain’t nobody’s business.

Then he smells that familiar perfume – thick and comforting. A palm presses to his forehead, soothing him as he opens his eyes.

Everything is bathed in red like a submarine on the seafloor. Claustrophobic. He’s in that in-between place again and knows even now that he’s not alive.

Dora gazes down. His head lies in her lap, same as before.

“You’re almost there, son,” she whispers, reading the exhaustion clear on his face.

“Why, Mama? Why’m I here? Where’s ‘Stina?”

She purses her lips. When she speaks, her voice is even and low.

“We had to wake you up. The second coming of Atticus Freeman,” she laughs softly. “You let that phone ring for a good while, baby.”

“Operator takes her time down there.”

“I can imagine. But you woke up. And you found Christina. It’s gonna take both of you, and it’s gonna be hard. Everything you sacrificed for hangs in the balance.”

“So I gotta sacrifice more?”

He hears himself as six or seven. A boy and not a man. Missing front teeth and tongue too big for his mouth. Glasses sliding down his nose. A match for this version of his mother, young and beautiful as the day she died.

“No. You just have to fight and win with Judas at your side. We both know she’ll waver. She’s a hungry thing. Scared and unloved, from the wrong branch of the family. But the two of you together – that’s the key. Understand?”

Tic sighs.

There’s no glory in being destined for greatness.

* * *

Red light.

Always a fucking red light.

He feels the tears coming already. Dear Lord, just let him throw in the towel, he thinks. Then he rolls on to his back and sees them. Photos hanging from clotheslines.

The red light. Leti’s dark room.

Laughter bubbles up painfully. This is what relief feels like. This is what waking up from death means.

There’s a puff of mist, like hot breath on his arm. His bloggoth, or Dee’s now, licks blood and filth from his skin. He gets it – he’s a newborn, gross and groaning. Muscles weak and teeth chattering. But that doesn’t mean he likes it.

He pats the creature’s thick neck, then begins the difficult work of dragging himself up two flights of stairs

It takes every ounce of his strength, but he makes it out of the basement eventually. Drained to the point of emptiness and coughing as he swallows down bile.

He passes out there on the floor and wakes up some time later with Christina looming over him, backlit by columns of light that seep through old windows.

Ruby stands just over her shoulder, looking down at him with unimpressed eyes.

“How’d you find me?”

“Call it a woman’s intuition,” Christina answers.

He laughs, mustering all that he can to sit up. Christina doesn’t flinch when he pulls her into a tight hug. It’s slippery, a mixture of slobber and gore, and it’s the best hug of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays! Thanks for reading, y'all
> 
> Special thanks to Stew for always giving these chapters the spit shine they need. Best in the business 🙏🏽


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